The Fourth Science Fiction Megapack

by Isaac Asimov

  “Our greeting to you, our honored brothers of the World Council of Scholars!”

  Then Collective 0-0009, the oldest and wisest of the Council, spoke and asked:

  “Who are you, our brother? For you do not look like a Scholar.”

  “Our name is Equality 7-2521,” we answered, “and we are a Street Sweeper of this City.”

  Then it was as if a great wind had stricken the hall, for all the Scholars spoke at once, and they were angry and frightened.

  “A Street Sweeper! A Street Sweeper walking in upon the World Council of Scholars! It is not to be believed! It is against all the rules and all the laws!”

  But we knew how to stop them.

  “Our brothers!” we said. “We matter not, nor our transgression. It is only our brother men who matter. Give no thought to us, for we are nothing, but listen to our words, for we bring you a gift such as has never been brought to men. Listen to us, for we hold the future of mankind in our hands.”

  Then they listened.

  We placed our glass box on the table before them. We spoke of it, and of our long quest, and of our tunnel, and of our escape from the Palace of Corrective Detention. Not a hand moved in that hall, as we spoke, nor an eye. Then we put the wires to the box, and they all bent forward and sat still, watching. And we stood still, our eyes upon the wire. And slowly, slowly as a flush of blood, a red flame trembled in the wire. Then the wire glowed.

  But terror struck the men of the Council. They leapt to their feet, they ran from the table, and they stood pressed against the wall, huddled together, seeking the warmth of one another’s bodies to give them courage.

  We looked upon them and we laughed and said:

  “Fear nothing, our brothers. There is a great power in these wires, but this power is tamed. It is yours. We give it to you.”

  Still they would not move.

  “We give you the power of the sky!” we cried. “We give you the key to the earth! Take it, and let us be one of you, the humblest among you. Let us work together, and harness this power, and make it ease the toil of men. Let us throw away our candles and our torches. Let us flood our cities with light. Let us bring a new light to men!”

  But they looked upon us, and suddenly we were afraid. For their eyes were still, and small, and evil.

  “Our brothers!” we cried. “Have you nothing to say to us?”

  Then Collective 0-0009 moved forward. They moved to the table and the others followed.

  “Yes,” spoke Collective 0-0009, “we have much to say to you.”

  The sound of their voice brought silence to the hall and to the beat of our heart.

  “Yes,” said Collective 0-0009, “we have much to say to a wretch who have broken all the laws and who boast of their infamy! How dared you think that your mind held greater wisdom than the minds of your brothers? And if the Council had decreed that you be a Street Sweeper, how dared you think that you could be of greater use to men than in sweeping the streets?”

  “How dared you, gutter cleaner,” spoke Fraternity 9-3452, “to hold yourself as one alone and with the thoughts of one and not of many?”

  “You shall be burned at the stake,” said Democracy 4-6998.

  “No, they shall be lashed,” said Unanimity 7-3304, “till there is nothing left under the lashes.”

  “No,” said Collective 0-0009, “we cannot decide upon this, our brothers. No such crime has ever been committed, and it is not for us to judge. Nor for any small Council. We shall deliver this creature to the World Council itself and let their will be done.”

  We looked upon them and we pleaded:

  “Our brothers! You are right. Let the will of the Council be done upon our body. We do not care. But the light? What will you do with the light?”

  Collective 0-0009 looked upon us, and they smiled.

  “So you think you have found a new power,” said Collective 0-0009. “Do you think all your brothers think that?”

  “No,” we answered.

  “What is not thought by all men cannot be true,” said Collective 0-0009.

  “You have worked on this alone?” asked International 1-5537.

  “Yes,” we answered.

  “What is not done collectively cannot be good,” said International 1-5537.

  “Many men in the Homes of the Scholars have had strange new ideas in the past,” said Solidarity 8-1164, “but when the majority of their brother Scholars voted against them, they abandoned their ideas, as all men must.”

  “This box is useless,” said Alliance 6-7349.

  “Should it be what they claim of it,” said Harmony 9-2642, “then it would bring ruin to the Department of Candles. The Candle is a great boon to mankind, as approved by all men. Therefore it cannot be destroyed by the whim of one.”

  “This would wreck the Plans of the World Council,” said Unanimity 2-9913, “and without the Plans of the World Council the sun cannot rise. It took fifty years to secure the approval of all the Councils for the Candle, and to decide upon the number needed, and to re-fit the Plans so as to make candles instead of torches. This touched upon thousands and thousands of men working in scores of States. We cannot alter the Plans again so soon.”

  “And if this should lighten the toil of men,” said Similarity 5-0306, “then it is a great evil, for men have no cause to exist save in toiling for other men.”

  Then Collective 0-0009 rose and pointed at our box.

  “This thing,” they said, “must be destroyed.”

  And all the others cried as one:

  “It must be destroyed!”

  Then we leapt to the table.

  We seized our box, we shoved them aside, and we ran to the window. We turned and we looked at them for the last time, and a rage, such as is not fit for humans to know, choked our voice in our throat.

  “You fools!” we cried. “You fools! You thrice-damned fools!”

  We swung our fist through the windowpane, and we leapt out in a ringing rain of glass.

  We fell, but we never let the box fall from our hands. Then we ran. We ran blindly, and men and houses streaked past us in a torrent without shape. And the road seemed not to be flat before us, but as if it were leaping up to meet us, and we waited for the earth to rise and strike us in the face. But we ran. We knew not where we were going. We knew only that we must run, run to the end of the world, to the end of our days.

  Then we knew suddenly that we were lying on a soft earth and that we had stopped. Trees taller than we had ever seen before stood over us in a great silence. Then we knew. We were in the Uncharted Forest. We had not thought of coming here, but our legs had carried our wisdom, and our legs had brought us to the Uncharted Forest against our will.

  Our glass box lay beside us. We crawled to it, we fell upon it, our face in our arms, and we lay still.

  We lay thus for a long time. Then we rose, we took our box, and walked on into the forest.

  It mattered not where we went. We knew that men would not follow us, for they never entered the Uncharted Forest. We had nothing to fear from them. The forest disposes of its own victims. This gave us no fear either. Only we wished to be away from the City and the air that touches upon the air of the City. So we walked on, our box in our arms, our heart empty.

  We are doomed. Whatever days are left to us, we shall spend them alone. And we have heard of the corruption to be found in solitude. We have torn ourselves from the truth which is our brother men, and there is no road back for us, and no redemption.

  We know these things, but we do not care. We care for nothing on earth. We are tired.

  Only the glass box in our arms is like a living heart that gives us strength. We have lied to ourselves. We have not built this box for the good of our brothers. We built it for its own sake. It is above all our brothers to us, and its truth above their truth. Why wonder about this? We have not many days to live. We are walking to the fangs awaiting us somewhere among the great, silent trees. There is not a thing behind us to regret
.

  Then a blow of pain struck us, our first and our only. We thought of the Golden One. We thought of the Golden One whom we shall never see again. Then the pain passed. It is best. We are one of the Damned. It is best if the Golden One forget our name and the body which bore that name.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  It has been a day of wonder, this, our first day in the forest.

  We awoke when a ray of sunlight fell across our face. We wanted to leap to our feet, as we have had to leap to our feet every morning of our life, but we remembered suddenly that no bell had rung and that there was no bell to ring anywhere. We lay on our back, we threw our arms out, and we looked up at the sky. The leaves had edges of silver that trembled and rippled like a river of green and fire flowing high above us.

  We did not wish to move. We thought suddenly that we could lie thus as long as we wished, and we laughed aloud at the thought. We could also rise, or run, or leap, or fall down again. We were thinking that these were things without sense, but before we knew it, our body had risen in one leap. Our arms stretched out of their own will, and our body whirled and whirled, till it raised a wind to rustle through the leaves of the bushes. Then our hands seized a branch and swung us high into a tree, with no aim save the wonder of learning the strength of our body. The branch snapped under us and we fell upon the moss that was soft as a cushion. Then our body, losing all sense, rolled over and over on the moss, dry leaves in our tunic, in our hair, in our face. And we heard suddenly that we were laughing, laughing aloud, laughing as if there were no power left in us save laughter.

  Then we took our glass box, and we went into the forest. We went on, cutting through the branches, and it was as if we were swimming through a sea of leaves, with the bushes as waves rising and falling and rising around us, and flinging their green sprays high to the treetops. The trees parted before us, calling us forward. The forest seemed to welcome us. We went on, without thought, without care, with nothing to feel save the song of our body.

  We stopped when we felt hunger. We saw birds in the tree branches, and flying from under our footsteps. We picked a stone and we sent it as an arrow at a bird. It fell before us. We made a fire, we cooked the bird, and we ate it, and no meal had ever tasted better to us. And we thought suddenly that there was a great satisfaction to be found in the food which we need and obtain by our own hand. And we wished to be hungry again and soon, that we might know again this strange new pride in eating.

  Then we walked on. And we came to a stream which lay as a streak of glass among the trees. It lay so still that we saw no water but only a cut in the earth, in which the trees grew down, upturned, and the sky at the bottom. We knelt by the stream and we bent down to drink. And then we stopped. For, upon the blue of the sky below us, we saw our own face for the first time.

  We sat still and we held our breath. For our face and our body were beautiful. Our face was not like the faces of our brothers, for we felt no pity when we looked upon it. Our body was not like the bodies of our brothers, for our limbs were straight and thin and hard and strong. And we thought that we could trust this being who looked upon us from the stream, and that we had nothing to fear from this being.

  We walked on till the sun had set. When the shadows gathered among the trees, we stopped in a hollow between the roots, where we shall sleep tonight. And suddenly, for the first time this day, we remembered that we are the Damned. We remembered it, and we laughed.

  We are writing this on the paper we had hidden in our tunic together with the written pages we had brought for the World Council of Scholars, but never given to them. We have much to speak of to ourselves, and we hope we shall find the words for it in the days to come. Now, we cannot speak, for we cannot understand.

  CHAPTER NINE

  We have not written for many days. We did not wish to speak. For we needed no words to remember that which has happened to us.

  It was on our second day in the forest that we heard steps behind us. We hid in the bushes, and we waited. The steps came closer. And then we saw the fold of a white tunic among the trees, and a gleam of gold.

  We leapt forward, we ran to them, and we stood looking upon the Golden One.

  They saw us, and their hands closed into fists, and the fists pulled their arms down, as if they wished their arms to hold them, while their body swayed. And they could not speak.

  We dared not come too close to them. We asked, and our voice trembled:

  “How come you to be here, Golden One?”

  But they whispered only:

  “We have found you.…”

  “How came you to be in the forest?” we asked.

  They raised their head, and there was a great pride in their voice; they answered:

  “We have followed you.”

  Then we could not speak, and they said:

  “We heard that you had gone to the Uncharted Forest, for the whole City is speaking of it. So on the night of the day when we heard it, we ran away from the Home of the Peasants. We found the marks of your feet across the plain where no men walk. So we followed them, and we went into the forest, and we followed the path where the branches were broken by your body.”

  Their white tunic was torn, and the branches had cut the skin of their arms, but they spoke as if they had never taken notice of it, nor of weariness, nor of fear.

  “We have followed you,” they said, “and we shall follow you wherever you go. If danger threatens you, we shall face it also. If it be death, we shall die with you. You are damned, and we wish to share your damnation.”

  They looked upon us, and their voice was low, but there was bitterness and triumph in their voice:

  “Your eyes are as a flame, but our brothers have neither hope nor fire. Your mouth is cut of granite, but our brothers are soft and humble. Your head is high, but our brothers cringe. You walk, but our brothers crawl. We wish to be damned with you, rather than be blessed with all our brothers. Do as you please with us, but do not send us away from you.”

  Then they knelt, and bowed their golden head before us.

  We had never thought of that which we did. We bent to raise the Golden One to their feet, but when we touched them, it was as if madness had stricken us. We seized their body and we pressed our lips to theirs. The Golden One breathed once, and their breath was a moan, and then their arms closed around us.

  We stood together for a long time. And we were frightened that we had lived for twenty-one years and had never known what joy is possible to men.

  Then we said:

  “Our dearest one. Fear nothing of the forest. There is no danger in solitude. We have no need of our brothers. Let us forget their good and our evil, let us forget all things save that we are together and that there is joy between us. Give us your hand. Look ahead. It is our own world, Golden One, a strange, unknown world, but our own.”

  Then we walked on into the forest, their hand in ours.

  And that night we knew that to hold the body of a woman in our arms is neither ugly nor shameful, but the one ecstasy granted to the race of men.

  We have walked for many days. The forest has no end, and we seek no end. But each day added to the chain of days between us and the City is like an added blessing.

  We have made a bow and many arrows. We can kill more birds than we need for our food; we find water and fruit in the forest. At night, we choose a clearing, and we build a ring of fires around it. We sleep in the midst of that ring, and the beasts dare not attack us. We can see their eyes, green and yellow as coals, watching us from the tree branches beyond. The fires smolder as a crown of jewels around us, and smoke stands still in the air, in columns made blue by the moonlight. We sleep together in the midst of the ring, the arms of the Golden One around us, their head upon our breast.

  Some day, we shall stop and build a house, when we shall have gone far enough. But we do not have to hasten. The days before us are without end, like the forest.

  We cannot understand this new life which we have found, yet it
seems so clear and so simple. When questions come to puzzle us, we walk faster, then turn and forget all things as we watch the Golden One following. The shadows of leaves fall upon their arms, as they spread the branches apart, but their shoulders are in the sun. The skin of their arms is like a blue mist, but their shoulders are white and glowing, as if the light fell not from above, but rose from under their skin. We watch the leaf which has fallen upon their shoulder, and it lies at the curve of their neck, and a drop of dew glistens upon it like a jewel. They approach us, and they stop, laughing, knowing what we think, and they wait obediently, without questions, till it pleases us to turn and go on.

  We go on and we bless the earth under our feet. But questions come to us again, as we walk in silence. If that which we have found is the corruption of solitude, then what can men wish for save corruption? If this is the great evil of being alone, then what is good and what is evil?

  Everything which comes from the many is good. Everything which comes from one is evil. Thus we have been taught with our first breath. We have broken the law, but we have never doubted it. Yet now, as we walk the forest, we are learning to doubt.

  There is no life for men, save in useful toil for the good of their brothers. But we lived not, when we toiled for our brothers, we were only weary. There is no joy for men, save the joy shared with all their brothers. But the only things which taught us joy were the power created in our wires, and the Golden One. And both these joys belong to us alone, they come from us alone, they bear no relation to our brothers, and they do not concern our brothers in any way. Thus do we wonder.

  There is some error, one frightful error, in the thinking of men. What is that error? We do not know, but the knowledge struggles within us, struggles to be born.

  Today, the Golden One stopped suddenly and said:

  “We love you.”

  But then they frowned and shook their head and looked at us helplessly.